Hughes to curb big spending

MARK Hughes has warned City fans not to expect any more major summer spending sprees. The Blues took their remarkable bonanza beyond the £115m mark by finally landing Joleon Lescott this week – the sixth big-money signing of this transfer window.

MARK Hughes has warned City fans not to expect any more major summer spending sprees.

The Blues took their remarkable bonanza beyond the £115m mark by finally landing Joleon Lescott this week – the sixth big-money signing of this transfer window.

But Hughes revealed he agreed with the club’s owners in December that they should cram five years’ worth of transfer market activity into two transfer windows to give the club the immediate boost it needed.

But now City have vowed to curb the big spending, and pump money into their academy to produce their own talent, and into their scouting network to capture and nurture young talent from around the world on the cheap.

Said Hughes: “In the future we won’t be going into the market to this extent again. We have gone very quickly into the market and brought in big numbers of players.

Investing heavily

“Usually in football this doesn’t happen over short periods. We are obviously investing heavily in our academy and in our scouting.

“In future we will be looking to acquire players we feel will add value to the club and become great players at Manchester City, rather than going out to the market and at times paying a premium because we need the players now.

“We will be in the market if top players become available, but it won’t be at the level we have seen in the last two windows.”

The need to spend big now, on experienced players, was motivated by the necessity of qualifying for the Champions League in order to take the club to the next level.

It was a strategy thrashed out when Hughes met with owner Sheikh Mansour and chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak in December.

Said the manager: “I set out what I felt the club needed in terms of players.

“It was basically a process that should have been done over a three- to five-year period but we made the decision that we would try to make it happen in two windows, and to see how far we could get with it.

“For us to bring in the amount of players we have brought in, and the amount who have gone out, means we have changed personnel at an unprecedented level. Twenty-six players have been sold, released or sent out on loan and that is a huge turnover.”

With the £24m capture of Joleon Lescott and former Barcelona left back Sylvinho, brought in on a free, City are expected to have completed their business ahead of next week’s transfer deadline.

There are still likely to be outgoing deals, headed by Richard Dunne who is attracting strong interest from Aston Villa, while Benjani, Tal Ben Haim and Javier Garrido are also expected to leave.

Now Hughes begins the process of moulding his legion of new boys into a team.

He says: “The challenge we have is that we have a lot of new faces, but those new faces are of the type of character that we think will help in that gelling process.”